The news of they and maybe even the year comes from the New York Times. According to a recently published story, Facebook is discussing with various exchanges to work out a deal and list a cryptocurrency. The same thing is expected from Telegram and Signal, 2 companies that want to roll out a token each in under 1 year.
According to 4 people that were briefed on ongoing negotiations, Facebook expects to launch the new cryptocurrency during the first half of this year. Bloomberg also reported on this project in the past and stated that the idea was to launch a stablecoin that is to be used within the WhatsApp messaging service.
There are different similar tokens that are expected to be launched in the future but if Facebook enters the market, it will be the company with the highest profile since there are 2.5 billion users for the social network all around the world.
An anonymous source was also quoted by CoinDesk saying that Facebook works on its own stablecoin to be used in WhatsApp.
At the moment we know that Facebook is investing in its own blockchain team, with a huge hiring push going on right now. At the moment there are close to twenty positions that are open and that are blockchain-related. There are also 50 engineers from Facebook that work on the blockchain Facebook project.
If Facebook launches the stablecoin and implements it in WhatsApp and other messaging systems owned, it can be really good for the crypto industry as a tech giant like Facebook would practically show clear interest and trust in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies as a whole. While we do talk about a stablecoin and not a regular cryptocoin, it is still a lot when it comes to building awareness. The vast reach of the social network, mainly through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, can lead to increased interest among regular people. Investors area already interested in seeing what will happen.
